Why Gun Sales Boomed In June

Guns are not perishable items. Kept in good repair a firearm lasts generations. So how is it that gun sales continue to set records when more than 100 million American gun owners already have over 300 million guns?

Last month, for example, was the busiest June for gun sales ever. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, says gun dealers completed 886,825 background checks in June 2015. The NSSF follows the FBI-administered National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) closely. Each time someone wants to buy a gun from a licensed dealer their name must be called into the FBI’s NICS database (or, in some cases, a state-operated database) to check if that person is barred from possessing a gun. The NSSF said the number of NICS checks last June was “the highest” on record “for the 17-year-old [NICS] system.” It was an increase of 10.1 percent over June 2014.

Now, some news reports say this jump in sales is all about gun owners’ fears about more gun control coming in the wake of the horrific attack on parishioners on June 17 at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The thing is this can’t be the whole story because in May 2015 some 918,707 background checks were called into the FBI’s database, making it the second-highest May ever.

For a deeper explanation I contacted Jim Curcuruto, director, industry research & analysis for the NSSF. He said, “Background checks were up over 19 percent in South Carolina, as compared to the previous June, but that one state isn’t enough to make the NICS checks jump 10 percent nationally. So, after making a lot of calls, we found that some of the bump was related to sales and other deals at retail chains. Some percentage of the rise in sales was definitely related to fear of more gun control. There are also typically spikes in sales regionally after something occurs that prompts people to look for ways to protect their own lives. But there has also been a steady rise in gun sales for some time. So there were multiple factors involved.”

Of course, we’re talking about NICS checks here, not actual gun sales. Just because someone undergoes a background check doesn’t mean they necessarily purchased a gun; also, someone could buy multiple guns after a single background check. This is why NICS is seen only as an indicator of the volume of gun sales.

Now, I started by asking why gun sales continue to set records when more than 100 million American gun owners already have over 300 million guns? This probably had a lot of gun aficionados asking, “What, the average gun owner only has three guns?”

Guns, you see, are heirlooms, works of art, and practical tools used for sport, self-defense and hunting. As works of art or tools—or both—guns have a specific purposes. Hunters will have a specific gun or guns for big game, for upland birds, for waterfowl and so on. Those who are into the shooting sports will find their collection expanding as they mature and try new sports. Those looking for self-defense guns will try new carry guns and more as technology and design adds options. As for collectors, well, by definition they just can’t get enough. So it’s actually not all that helpful to compare the number of guns in private hands to the number of gun owners.

Also on Forbes:

The market also expands with trends and needs. Handgun sales, for example, have been far surpassing the sale of long guns for some time. This would seem to bolster the argument that people are buying firearms for self-defense. According to the FBI, last month 483,021 people had their names called into the NICS system because they were interested in buying a handgun, whereas 305,401 people underwent background checks so they could buy a shotgun or rifle. This difference has been the norm, as handgun sales have been surpassing long gun sales for years.

The FBI, however, cautions that these NICS records might not reflect all handgun purchases. A footnote in the FBI report says, “Some states may reflect lower than expected numbers for handgun checks based on varying state laws pertaining to handgun permits. Since the permit check is done in place of the NICS check in most of the affected states, the low handgun statistics are often balanced out by a higher number of handgun permit checks.”

Interestingly, calls in the NICS system have been largely rising since 2003—long before President Barack Obama won his first term in 2008 and before the recent political fights over gun rights versus gun control.

So there are actually a lot of factors behind the current growth in gun sales and ownership. The number of people with concealed-carry permits (which allows them to carry a handgun) now exceeds 12 million. In the mid-1980s there were about one million people with such permits. Meanwhile, a growing list of states have opted not to even require residents to get a permit to carry a concealed handgun—this is often called “constitutional carry.” Both Kansas and Maine recently became constitutional-carry states. In total seven states now allow some form of constitutional carry and many more allow open carry.

What all this and the growth of many shooting sports means is that the customer base for the firearms industry and related businesses has been growing for more than a decade.

I am a bestselling author and a freelance journalist who concentrates on man’s struggle to be all he can be. My latest book is a novel called Kill Big Brother, a thriller that shows how to get it done right. I am also the author of This Will Make a Man of You--One Man's Sea...